Friday, September 21, 2018
September 25...For the Critical/Democratic Group
Use this space to continue to discuss your ideas about how to move forward. You can discuss possible common readings, continue to brainstorm about what sort of project you want to design and the viability of your various ideas. I (Kurt) will try to participate, too.
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ReplyDeleteI am also interested in how real democratic education has to be freeing for all. Looking at instances of teachers and students gaining voice sounds great…Meier’s “The Power of their Ideas” is a classic in this regard.
DeleteI recently stumbled upon this theory related to constructivist professional development. The article referenced two works.
ReplyDeleteLieberman, A. (1995). Practices that support teacher development: transforming conceptions of professional learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 76(8), 591-596.
and
Darling-Hammond, L. (1995). Changing conceptions of teaching and teacher development. Teacher Education Quarterly, 22(4), 9-26.
are both cited in this article that mentioned the idea of giving teachers a voice in how they develop professionally. I have barely scratched the surface, so it could be that there are more recent/more relevant publications that confront this intersection.
I also think it would be worthwhile to dig a bit into this issue of student agency and see if there's an overlap between democratic education and student voice.
I love the idea of framing a question and having both a teacher and student answer as to how they would teach a particular SOL. I'm very interested in seeing how these responses will compare and what each will add to the conversation.
I also like the idea of the group of us determining how we would answer the question, as I think it would be nice to step out of my English lens and consider a math SOL or a science SOL. I think some interesting conversation (and perhaps a "practice" of participating in democratic education curriculum design) might allow other theories to come to light as we navigate the collaboration. In ways, I am more interested in carefully applying philosophy to the process than the product if that makes sense.
Hey Christy -
ReplyDeleteThere's a huge overlap between student voice and democratic education. I have a number of articles from my article submission for Dr. Christenbury's that address that specific topic. I don't have them on my current laptop (I'm at work) but I will have them on my personal laptop tonight. I could probably excerpt the section that covers the history of student voice and democratic education and share that section with everyone as well.
I'm thinking this passage from Hytten should inform some of our thinking: "Democratic teaching involves creating communities of learning, where collaboration and cooperation are the norm and students have opportunities to participate in decisions about curriculum, assignments, school organization, and assessments."
I think we should consider what we hope to accomplish before we get too bogged down in the details of constructing a goal that might inadvertently hijack student-teacher agency. I'm not 100 percent clear on what we're planning and why.
-Pete W.
Your suggestion to hold off on designing anything is consonant with the idea of an Inquiry to Action group (and very Deweyan)…you need to carry out the inquiry before you take action.
DeletePosted by Jacqueline
ReplyDeleteI also think Hytten's article offers great insight as we explore student voice and teacher voice in order to design a democratic model of education. Hytten (p. 11) also states that "in our current era, we seem to have lost sight of [the] civic mission of schooling,..." Citing the work of the Educational Policies Commission, Hytten says "that an educated, democratic citizen:
1. is sensitive to the disparities of human circumstances,
2. acts to correct unsatisfactory conditions,
3. seeks to understand social structures and processes,
4. has defenses against propaganda,
5. respects honest differences of opinion,
6. has regard for the nation's resources,
7. measures scientific advances by its contribution to general welfare,
8. is a cooperating member of the world community,
9. respects the law,
10. is economically literate,
11. accepts his or her civic duties,
12. and acts upon an unswerving loyalty to democratic ideals."
I think many of these offer jumping off points for crafting democratic lessons that encourage students to look beyond themselves and to how they may positively impact the world around them.
We could/should use the list of 12 to see how/whether it lines up with Dewey’s ideas.
DeletePosted by Jacqueline
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated the Stitslein article in that it gave examples of how to incorporate democratic pedagogy into the curriculum. As detailed in the article, urban areas desperately lack this. While some of our team are interested in democracy as it relates to teacher and student agency, I am interested in democracy in the curriculum. This is absolutely related to student agency but I question how we bring teachers and administrators to embraces the need for more democratic urban schools versus what is described as more of a controlled police state. I am still clarifying my role/contribution to our group; I am more interested in the position Stitzlein takes and that is educating students in ways that they practice democratic skills that will prove useful in future endeavors (see Dewey's quote on page 69). I look forward to your thoughts on this article as it pertains to (or does not pertain to) the formulation of our inquiry.